VETERAN political artist Peter Kennard has called on anti-war activists and environmental campaigners to work together to stop ecological catastrophe.

He made the comments ahead of tomorrow night’s launch of a new book and an exhibition documenting five decades of his political art, which has covered war, repression and resistance from Chile to South Africa and Iraq.

“I wanted to get through to young people about important political events that led up to the present, so they have a sense of context and the reality of dissent and protest in relation to what’s happening in the world,” he told the Morning Star.

Reflecting on the anti-war movement, he said: “I think its building up again. It goes in peaks and troughs, especially with what’s happening now.

“Trump is tearing up the intermediate nuclear treaty, there is an arms race now, so we’ve actually got to connect the arms race with the ecological catastrophe that’s on the way.

“The US military spend as much on oil as any company in the world to maintain these deadly weapons.

“So the anti-war movement has got to connect up with Extinction Rebellion and through those connections start making a mass movement against weapons and environmental catastrophe.

“It’s a time now where people have got to join together in some way, hopefully under the banner of a Labour Party led by Corbyn,” he added.

Peter Kennard’s exhibition opens tomorrow night at Foyles in London’s Charing Cross Road, alongside the launch of his new book Visual Dissent: 50 Years of Hard-Hitting Protest Art from Britain’s Foremost Political Artist.